According to the Providence Journal, Rhode Island won plaudits from the National Council on Teacher Quality. The newspaper, which is notorious for its inattention to background, describes NCTQ as a “nonprofit, nonpartisan research and policy group.”
This is not accurate. As I have described on this blog in detail, NCTQ was created in 2000 by the rightwing Thomas B. Fordham Foundation at a time when I was a member of the board. It was created specifically to harass teacher-education institutions and to advance an agenda in which untrained teachers could win certification by passing a test.
As I explained in this post, NCTQ floundered about, seeking a strategy and was rescued in 2001 when George W. Bush’s secretary of education Rod Paige gave NCTQ an unrestricted grant of $5 million to keep it alive. The teacher test it created, called the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence, eventually was turned over to another company that sells online certification for only $1995.00. Is that a high-quality way to prepare teachers for the nation’s children?
The board of NCTQ is dominated by corporate reformers. It may have members from both parties, but it is certainly NOT non-partisan. It is hostile to teacher education and infatuated with the idea that test scores are both the measure and the outcome of education.
Mercedes Schneider analyzed the board and the political agenda of NCTQ at great length on her blog; her posts have been widely reposted.
Its recent, widely heralded report on the nation’s schools of education–which found all but four to be inadequate–was based on a review of their reading lists and syllabi, not on actual visits to the campuses. This was supposed to show the power of “Big Data,” that is, making judgments without any personal interactions, but it really demonstrated that the NCTQ review was a hit job on teacher education. I always have been a tough critic of teacher education, but I also believe that you can’t grade an institution without ever setting foot in its buildings or interviewing its professors and students.
The Providence Journal should have done a few minutes of research on the Internet before lauding the findings of the NCTQ report on Rhode Island. What they have done here is journalism by press release. That’s not journalism. That’s lazy.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thanks for putting all this together for Rhode Islanders, Diane. That article on the front page of our newspaper of record made me gag on my biscotti this morning. I hope they publish all or some of your post but you already know how likely that is.
Carole,
The ProJo treated me shabbily, twisted my words, quoted me out of context, and assigned a writer who knows as much about education as I know about macramé. Totally insulting. Don’t believe anything they print except the weather and double check that too.
Far be it from me to defend the Projo when it comes to reporting on education, and reporting on Diane Ravitch in particular, but in the interests of fairness I should point out that they occasionally do let a good article like this one slip through:
http://www.providencejournal.com/opinion/commentary/20131023-carole-marshall-high-stakes-tests-hurt-urban-students.ece
Thank you, Diane.
The Providence Journal is a newspaper?
Diane,
I am a journalism student working on an article about Teach for America, and I have been having a hard time finding someone to talk about some of the negative perceptions of the group.
You definitely seem to have experience and opinions about this.
Would you be willing to talk to me about this?
benjaminhohenstatt@gmail.com
Benjamin,
Contact Gary Rubinstein. Google his blog. TFA is destroying the teaching profession with its claims that its young college graduates need only five weeks training to be “great.” Would you fly in a jet whose pilot had five weeks of training? Or use a surgeon with five weeks training?
Ah, but TFA is not as close to that analogy as it is to this one:
“Would you force OTHER PEOPLE to fly in a jet whose pilot had five weeks of training, or force them to use a surgeon with five weeks of training, if it kept your costs down and indeed had the possibility of opening up profitable investment opportunities in the future?”
For many in this world (at least the ones with they money to make their opinions matter). the answer is a resounding, “HELL YES!”
The National Council for Teacher Quality;
it’s not national,
it’s not a council,
it has no idea what teacher quality is.
Discuss.
On a previous blog I wrote about the power of the 5 corporations controlling what is put out as news in the media.
May I add that if one had followed the “Columbia Journalism Review” for the last several years that one would be aware of what is happening in “journalism” today.
What is described in this blog is NOT unprecedented.
The old time respected journalists are deeply concerned. Good journalists are fired to cut costs in order to make more money for the owners. Good reporters are finding good jobs much harder to get and journalism itself is kind of on the ropes. Newspapers are closing, people do not trust the “news” and sadly people are uninformed, misinformed. The tragedy to our country in journalism mirrors what is happening in “education” today.
Thanks for the information on the NCTQ. I had no idea. I’m certain others didn’t either. So, kudos from this group is less than meaningless.
I love reading your blog. You keep us up to date on the latest and most important events / attacks on our profession, and help us prepare.
I, personally, apologize for the way you were treated in RI. You deserve better — much better! Thanks for all you do for our students and for our profession!